![]() ![]() Marston's story is one of redemption, and in that way already more noble than anything else Rockstar has done. Yes, you can make Marston steal, or murder, or shoot a horse point blank in the head so it collapses too fast like a heavy meat weight (although - for your own sake - don't) but there's still a dignity and seriousness to the presentation which just can't exist in a world containing internet cafes called lot of this has to do with Marston himself. If you're struggling to think of a touch as sophisticated as this in any GTA, it might be because Red Dead benefits from being a period piece, which seems to somehow curb the worst of Rockstar's occasional excesses. Remember when Marston reaches Mexico and the game plays you a pretty Jose Gonzales song as a reward? It's like it's soundtracking the movie that you're playing about you and the ground beneath you, a perfect moment for a game that's so often about stepping back from action instead of getting lost inside it. ![]() As a consequence so much of the game is just you and the land (and your horse, in this America before the age of the automobile) whether it's patrolling the perimeter of the McFarlane farm or, more likely, riding out from mud-plank town to mud-plank town, watching the sun in the sky, hearing the wind over the trample of hooves, forced into a constant reckoning of the scale and potential of America. In Red Dead even the biggest towns sit on top of the earth, timber balanced on dirt floors with dirt in between, seeds for the all-encompassing cities that will follow. In GTA the city is everything, layers of concrete and steel arranged in occasionally functional, occasionally beautiful strips, tunnels and towers - constructs that we exist utterly inside of. But actually it's more like GTA in negative - not about cities, but the land itself, that vast and stubborn scrub familiar to anyone who's ever stood outside a city in the South Western United States and wrestled with the horizonless size of the place: more of it than can be imagined, but not enough to stop men fighting each other for it anyway. The game's systems and style are instantly familiar - the shooting, the talking, the swaggered walking. Landing in the middle, Red Dead is both of a piece with GTA and not. GTA 5, meanwhile, is a bewilderingly accurate look at the somehow fabricless city of Los Angeles, site of America's illusion industry, the last resort of dreamers and criminals. GTA 4 is a classic tale of immigration, of New York harbouring huddled masses and shotgun capitalism enabling self-made dreams. As a pair these Grand Theft Autos are the culmination of Rockstar's years-long fascination, as seen in everything from Midnight Club to Manhunt, with the culture and geography of America, both of which are essentially devoured whole and then regurgitated as seething, super-real coastal cities. Red Dead arrived sandwiched in between two of these games, GTA 4 and GTA 5, both developed primarily in Edinburgh at Rockstar North while Red Dead was underway in San Diego. "It is a great shame if America is always to be left to Americans" said Sergio Leone, director of the most famous Italian Westerns, articulating a philosophy that just as well applies to Rockstar, who make games about America from a half-in, half-out position of intimate distance. The Spaghettis were, after all, a negotiation of American-ness from afar, a stripped down take on the founding myths of an immigrant nation as perceived by Europeans who never made the journey. Spaghetti Westerns are a perfect fit for Rockstar Games. But then we catch a glimpse of our hero John Marston, flanked by two men, and - twang - a jarring, sleazy Morricone note tells us that we are in a Spaghetti. ![]() A paddle steamer comes in to dock at a place called Blackwater, wistful piano drifting over a bustling crowd impatient to step into the promise of the frontier. Enjoy!įor a few moments at the beginning of Red Dead Redemption it's unclear just what kind of Western we're in. Editor's note: Enjoying Red Dead Redemption 2 this weekend? We thought, upon the release of Rockstar's sequel, it'd be a good time to return to Nathan Ditum's wonderful retrospective of the original, first published in July 2016. ![]()
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